Chairman Graves Statement on January Jobs Report

Statement

House Small Business Committee Chairman Sam Graves (R-MO) today issued the following statement after the U.S. Department of Labor reported that 243,000 jobs were created in January while the unemployment rate fell to 8.3 percent:

"Today's jobs report is certainly good news, but so much more could be done to revive the economy and get Americans back on the job faster. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office report released this week, unless we change course, economic growth will remain sluggish and unemployment will continue to hover near an unacceptable 8 percent.

"In our Wednesday hearing on the state of the American small business, we heard that unnecessarily burdensome regulations, complex tax structures, inconsistent credit, and the federal debt are creating a poor environment for their companies to create jobs. Unfortunately, these issues aren't being addressed by this White House. The U.S. Tax Code is now nearly 70,000 pages and growing. There were approximately 4,430 changes to the tax code from 2001 through 2010, an average of more than one a day. This week, we learned that our nation's deficit will rise to $1.08 trillion in 2012, the fourth consecutive year of trillion-dollar deficits. Small business owners still say that federal regulations are their greatest burden.

"Removing these growth obstacles for small business owners should be the number one priority. House Republicans have sent more than 30 bipartisan jobs bills to the Senate, where 27 of them still await consideration. It is time for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to act."

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